Tesla’s autopilot update arrives this week

Tesla drivers will be able to benefit from fully autonomous driving later this week

Tesla's automated driving ambitions are about to be realised in the shape of a long awaited software update for all its electric vehicles.

The Tesla Version 7 software with Autopilot gets its release this Thursday and brings with it plenty of upgrades, a new look and that all important ability for Tesla cars to be far more autonomous than is currently the case.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to announce the release yet gave very few details on what it actually consists of beyond a cosmetic update and the aforementioned small tweaks.

This isn't the first time that Musk has spoken up about Tesla's autonomous vehicle plans. At a conference in early 2015 he explained that the process towards autonomy would be a gradual one and that it would “take quite a while”.

Plenty of other companies are indeed rolling out autonomous technology to their cars and a study by Ford found that semi-autonomous car tech has been wildly popular in Europe thus suggesting that autonomous tech will be embraced by the masses.

Tesla's Version 7 software has been around for a little while after the company released it to a clutch of beta testers back in August and consumers can expect to get behind the wheel of their up-to-date Tesla Model S or X in the next five data.